<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Rain and Sun by TurnUps</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29363793">Rain and Sun</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurnUps/pseuds/TurnUps'>TurnUps</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fruits Basket, Fruits Basket (Anime 2019), Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A little angst, Canon-Compliant, Filling in canon gaps, Fluff, Other, hatori has no idea what children are, its soft and fluffy and just two members of the zodiac bonding, or how to deal with them</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:42:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,730</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29363793</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurnUps/pseuds/TurnUps</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It had started when Momiji was still young. When his mother could hardly look at him and his father could do little more than that. Hatori opened his door to find a small child peering around his father’s legs, like a duckling behind a mother duck. Brown eyes stared at him.<br/>Hatori didn’t said a word. Waiting for the boy’s father to tell him what was wrong.<br/>Instead, he got a sigh as the man pushed hair out of his eyes. <br/>“I have to go to work,” he said, as though that explained everything. “His mother can’t be around him, but you’ll be here all day, won’t you?”<br/>***<br/>Hatori ends up babysitting Momiji a lot, before his mother forgot, and ends up learning more about kids than he planned.<br/>An exploration into Hatori and Momiji's relationship over the years.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sohma Hatori &amp; Sohma Momiji</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Rain and Sun</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>It had started when Momiji was still young. When his mother could hardly look at him and his father could do little more than that. Hatori opened his door to find a small child peering around his father’s legs, like a duckling behind a mother duck. Brown eyes stared at him.</p>
<p>Hatori didn’t said a word. Waiting for the boy’s father to tell him what was wrong.</p>
<p>Instead, he got a sigh as the man pushed hair out of his eyes.</p>
<p>“I have to go to work,” he said, as though that explained everything. “His mother can’t be around him, but you’ll be here all day, won’t you?”</p>
<p>Momiji’s father was the kind of man that didn’t really ask questions. He expected an answer, expected people to come to his beck and call and consider it an honour that they were asked in the firstplace.</p>
<p>“You want me to take care of him?” Hatori had asked slowly. Babysit. He was being asked to babysit. It would have been laughable, if Hatori had been the kind of person who laughed out loud. Momiji’s father, already so clueless with children, thought Hatori would not be.</p>
<p>But maybe it made sense, he reasoned. He was the most responsible adult member of the zodiac. No one would think to leave a child in the hands of Shigure or Ayami. And no one was about to trust Akito with childcare.</p>
<p>“That would be perfect. Thank you. Now I really had better go, or I’ll be late.”</p>
<p>He bent down whilst Hatori thought about whether he had actually agreed to anything, ruffling the blonde fluff on the boy’s head and telling him to behave himself. Hatori hadn’t agreed. He had asked a question.</p>
<p>And then he was gone. Walking back down the path before Hatori could find a suitable excuse. There were many. He was busy. He worked from home and a doctor’s office was no place for a small child. There were needles and pills and who knew what else a child could harm themselves with. But none of that was said.</p>
<p>Now there was a tiny child staring up at him, his cheeks red from the cold. Round cheeks, so that they looked like twin cherries.</p>
<p>Hatori didn’t deal with children. He had an aversion to babies and hated when children stared at or waved at him in public. He could hardly hold a conversation with a child – he never had the knack of getting on with kids who were younger than him. At least Yuki was as quiet and antisocial as he was.</p>
<p>He had no idea what to do.</p>
<p>The child was standing out in the cold, burying a tiny nose into the huge, woollen scarf around his neck. Shop-brought, not handknitted. So, Hatori stood to one side, holding the door open.</p>
<p>“I suppose you’d better come in.”</p>
<p>The child – Momiji, Hatori forced himself to at least remember the child’s name – nodded and stepped inside. He slipped his shoes off before Hatori even slid the door shut, and was staring at him with those huge eyes once more.</p>
<p>“You can just – leave those there,” Hatori made a vague gesture to the doormat. Then he nodded, taking a few steps into his office. Momiji followed. Yes, just like a duckling, Hatori thought, and the fluffy, almost white hair on his head matched the image. A new-born chick's feathers.</p>
<p>A chick born two months early to a woman who had screamed hysterically when she had first held him. Who had shoved the rabbit into away from her, into her husband's arms, and wept as if she were the child. The panicked, out-loud weeping of a child who needed attention.</p>
<p>The rabbit, a tiny, pink thing, wriggled blindly. Silently.</p>
<p>Hatori’s fingers tapped at his desk as he sat, as if trying to banish the memory. Momiji stood, at the corner, almost half-hidden as he peered around it at Hatori.</p>
<p>He wondered about smiling. It would probably come out wrong - probably make the boy cry, instead.</p>
<p>And yet, what was he supposed to do with this child?</p>
<p>"Did you bring anything to do with you?" He asked. His fingers kept tapping and Momiji's eyes focused on them.</p>
<p>He got no response.</p>
<p>"Toys?" He tried again, a little louder. "Do you have any toys?"</p>
<p>He could see the brown eyes focusing like a camera on his face. A slight frown as the boy tried to pick out the words.</p>
<p>Finally, he shook his head.</p>
<p>Hatori sighed through his nose. What was he expected to do? What else did children do? He glanced around, for any inspiration. Medical books like cinder blocks, equipment – nothing that looked promising.</p>
<p>He settled on a sheet of paper and a pen, sliding it across the desk. Draw. Children drew. Or wrote things.</p>
<p>"I'm afraid I don't have much to do." He said, though he wondered how much Momiji understood.</p>
<p>He nodded and took the pen, sinking to the floor where he stood and resting the paper on the tatami mats. He was gripping the pen so hard that he would probably mark it.</p>
<p>That was how the day passed. Momiji was quiet - incredibly so - worryingly so, if Hatori knew anything about children. And he knew a little - he had studied a little about child psychology and knew that Momiji was supposed to be talking now. He should have been able to say if he needed anything.</p>
<p>But he stayed troublingly silent.</p>
<p>He brought it up the next time. There was a next time – of course there was, because Momiji Sohma’s father loved his work. Loved his work and wasn’t sure how to juggle a wife who couldn’t stand his son. It was standing in the way of his perfect family. She was meant to be the one to stay home – to create the perfect, nuclear family. Just another thing that the curse had ruined. So now Momiji was sitting on the floor of Hatori’s office most days, scribbling his way through a pad of paper and drawing huge-eared rabbits – lots of rabbits buried in burrows or out on the meadow. Adorned with flowers and butterflies and everything else that a happy child should be drawing.</p>
<p>Only there was something about the rabbits – always sat apart from each other – that looked incredibly lonely.</p>
<p>Sometimes he did pile up the books. Not into houses. Into a landscape for the paper bunnies to hop through.</p>
<p>He had looked it up in textbooks – why children took a long time to talk. The trauma of what he was going through might have been a part. But also-</p>
<p>“Are you speaking to Momiji in German or Japanese?” Hatori asked.</p>
<p>Momiji’s father stared at him. His hand twitched on the boy’s shoulder. He was late, he was always late.</p>
<p>“Japanese.” He spoke like it should have been obvious. “But we do speak as quietly as we can in the house, don’t we Momiji?”</p>
<p>The boy nodded like a trained dog, and it set Hatori’s teeth on edge. So that explained it.</p>
<p>Momiji’s father left, glancing at his watch as though the one question had sent him off schedule. Hatori crouched down to the boy’s eye-level.</p>
<p>“You don’t have to be quiet here, okay? If you need something, you need to tell me.”</p>
<p>The boy nodded again. As silent as ever. Hatori kept the sigh bundled up in his throat.</p>
<p>But then, as he was looking down at perfectly polished shoes and fiddling with the hem of his shorts, a tiny voice came out of him.</p>
<p>"I want to speak like mama."</p>
<p>Hatori blinked. The short sentence and soft voice had surprised him so much, he almost fell backwards into his office.</p>
<p>"Mama not speak like Papa," Momiji continued. He looked up at Hatori from under his fringe with eyes and dark and large as a fawn's. "But he can. I know they speak about me when she look at me."</p>
<p>"Your mother comes from a long way away. They speak a different language there." Hatori said, wondering if he was being too patronising. Wondering how much this child could understand.</p>
<p>"I want speak like her. You think that make her smile?" The boy had a way of speaking, as if he was carefully selecting each word before he said it.</p>
<p>No. It absolutely would not make her smile. Hatori had been called out to settle the woman often enough that he knew Momiji's efforts would be met with screaming and rage and hysterics.</p>
<p>“Maybe.” Hatori said. He didn’t know why his mouth insisted on saying that instead of the truth. Maybe because it made the boy grin at him.</p>
<p>Maybe that was why he found himself buying a Japanese to German dictionary – found himself looking up courses online and then abandoning his paperwork by the time Momiji was there again. Suddenly, he was sat on the floor with the boy and they were puzzling over the German words.</p>
<p>Momiji was intelligent. He picked it up quickly and the accent appeared as naturally as if it had been there from birth. Even his drawings were advanced for his age – his wobbly flowers and round rabbits showed that. They were good.</p>
<p>And Hatori saw all of the drawings. Because Momiji would hold it up in front of his desk, like a placard. He would only be able to see Momiji’s small hands and his big brown eyes.</p>
<p>“I like rabbits,” Momiji would say.</p>
<p>“I can see.” Hatori would be busy with paperwork. With juggling five different patient’s paperwork.</p>
<p>“Girl called rabbit on T.V.”</p>
<p>“Is that so?” Ignoring Momiji did not make him go away, so Hatori had settled for minimal replies. It kept the boy happy, and it kept Hatori working.</p>
<p>“I like it.” A pause here, and the paper would waver and dip onto Hatori’s desk facedown. “Mama does not like rabbits.”</p>
<p>Hatori had no idea what made him say it. But a heart he didn’t know that he had felt pity for the small child, and he found himself saying, “I do.”</p>
<p>Momiji’s brown eyes widened. His picture was discarded now, and he peered over the top of the desk at Hatori.</p>
<p>“Really?”</p>
<p>There was something in big eyes and rosy cheeks that was dangerous. Something dangerous in blonde duckling hair and dimples at either side of a smile. Something very dangerous indeed, because Hatori ended up replying, “not as much as seahorses.”</p>
<p>Which he deeply regretted, every time that he received a piece of paper with a lumpy seahorse drawn on it. It was not done to be cruel, not done as a joke, and that made it even worse. He hid them away, in a desk drawer, and could never let anybody know they existed. He could only imagine Shigure’s reaction.</p>
<p>And it was nice, he supposed, to go through them and watch them turn less and less wobbly as Momiji started to master pencils. This was a smart boy, but he wasn’t doing anything at home but stay out of his mother’s way.</p>
<p>So Hatori found himself volunteering to babysit Momiji more often. For longer. And Momiji’s father thought that was brilliant – because it kept Momiji away whilst his wife was sick. (That was how he described it – that it was just an illness that would pass.)  And he found himself picking up art supplies – crayons and colouring pencil and a proper pad of paper.</p>
<p>Momiji was a careful child. He didn’t make marks on the floor. He didn’t draw on the walls. It made Hatori trust him enough to move onto glitter and sequins and stickers from the one-hundred-yen shop.</p>
<p>His office soon became full of glitter covered drawings – of rabbits and seahorses, or flowers. Scenes with happy raindrops, or happy suns – everything was happy as far as Momiji was concerned. And though Hatori was no child psychologist, he wondered if there was a reason why.</p>
<p>“Are you happy when it rains?” he asked it on an afternoon when it was, in fact, raining.</p>
<p>Momiji was sat at the doorway, his hands pressed against the glass as he watched the raindrops. They would leave marks – so would his nose. Hatori would have to wipe them down. At four, he still had his mother’s blonde hair. His eyelashes were still long and dark, so that he still looked like a baby deer.</p>
<p>“Rain make plants happy,” Momiji said.</p>
<p>There was always a flurry of relief in Hatori when Momiji spoke. He mumbled a lot of German words, but he stuck to Japanese. Of course he did, because he couldn’t speak German in his house.</p>
<p>“But what about you? Does it make you happy?” Hatori pressed. It was easier to speak to Momiji when he was trying to find out what was going on in his head.</p>
<p>“You go outside?” Momiji asked, and the smile on his face gave way that he had understood Hatori, and was choosing not to. “With me?”</p>
<p>“I have work to do,” Hatori said. He didn’t, but he didn’t fancy going out in the rain either. There were too many risks to Momiji’s neat, pale clothes.</p>
<p>“Work?” Momiji echoed. He stepped back up to the desk. “Can I see?”</p>
<p>Hatori closed his notebook. “It's not for children.”</p>
<p>“Then why?” Momiji’s huge brown eyes blinked at him.</p>
<p>“Hm?”</p>
<p>“Why papa send me here? If your work not for children?”</p>
<p>“Because your father is a busy man.” He kept his eyes on his desk. Concentrated on keeping his face impassive so that he didn’t seem angry by that.</p>
<p>“You're busy.”</p>
<p>Hatori’s mouth twitched of its own accord. Yes. He was. And yet Momiji was here. Still talking to him.</p>
<p>“Not so busy that I can't keep an eye on you,” he managed to say.</p>
<p>“So busy that you can't keep<em> both </em>eyes on me.” Momiji was right at his chair now. One hand on his desk.</p>
<p>Okay," he found himself saying. And standing. "I will take a break."</p>
<p>Hatori crossed the room – to where his coat hung up by the door. He slipped it on, and turned to find Momiji one step behind him.</p>
<p>“Just a break?” Momiji asked.</p>
<p>“I'm busy.” Hatori picked up Momiji’s coat too, and held it out to him.</p>
<p>Momiji didn’t move. “You're boring.”</p>
<p>“Grown-ups always are.” The little duffle coat seemed heavy in Hatori’s hand, and yet Momiji just stared at him.</p>
<p>“Then I'll never grow up,” he said, determinedly.</p>
<p>And didn’t he just look like a little Peter Pan? With that fluffy blonde hair, those rosy cheeks and mischievous smile. This was an objectively cute child, Hatori realised – and he didn’t even <em>like </em>children.</p>
<p>“Hm,” he said.</p>
<p>That was the moment he realised. Momiji’s arms were out at his sides slightly. He wasn’t staring – he was waiting. Of course – he was a  tiny, tiny thing and he couldn’t put a coat on by himself yet.</p>
<p>Hatori knelt down with the tiny duffle coat, watching Momiji’s arms go further out, like a bird stretching its wings. He slipped it around the tiny boy, mindful of his fingers touching him. Momiji was warm – warmer than Hatori – and he didn’t want him to flinch away from the cold.</p>
<p>“Can you do the toggles?” Hatori asked, and surprised himself with how soft his voice was.</p>
<p>Momiji nodded and began to fiddle with one of them. It was clear within seconds that he couldn’t. That he couldn’t quite manage to get the wedge of wood through the loop.</p>
<p>Hatori went to – and his hands brushed Momiji’s. He froze, and for a moment looked scared, before his hands dropped to his sides. Maybe Hatori should have said something, to assure him that it wasn’t a problem, but once again he was at a loss with <em>what </em>to say.</p>
<p>So he did the coat up in silence. Then took the umbrella from by the door, and led the way out the front door. Momiji followed, like a little duckling, hopping down the two wooden steps and smiling up at Hatori.</p>
<p>Who just nodded, and continued down the path. He opened the umbrella, and expected Momiji to stay close – to stay dry – but he walked ahead. His face was tilted up to the sky, so that drops ran down his cheeks.</p>
<p>The few people out on the estate noticed. They smiled and said the boy was sweet – “as all children of the rabbit are.” Momiji noticed – and smiled at them, seemingly oblivious to Hatori walking along quickly behind him, reaching out the umbrella.</p>
<p>“Please, stay under here.” Hatori tried to sound as authoritative as possible, but Momiji didn’t seem to be listening. “You need to keep dry.”</p>
<p>Momiji turned then. And he had stopped inches from a huge puddle. He looked up at Hatori, with very serious eyes for a four-year-old.</p>
<p>“Only water,” he said. “And water is good.”</p>
<p>Hatori swallowed his hesitation, and took Momiji’s shoulder. He steered him gently around the puddle, and kept him close under the umbrella.</p>
<p>“Your father won’t be happy if I return you with messy, wet clothes.”</p>
<p>“Father is never happy.” He couldn’t see Momiji’s face, but he could see a slither at the back of his neck, where he walked with his chin down. “Not with me.”</p>
<p>Hatori’s chest squeezed. It was a familiar squeeze – the squeeze that came with being a member of the zodiac. And it was a squeeze that he thought he was numb to – he was the ice, after all. But maybe even ice melted when faced with deer eyes and duckling hair.</p>
<p>“It’s very…” He hesitated. Still had a hand on Momiji’s shoulder to keep him close. “Complicated.”</p>
<p>“Because of Mama.”</p>
<p>The estate was peaceful around them. The light bamboo and wood of the buildings looking dark underneath the steady drip of raindrops. The smell of it was in the air and the rain made the pavement shine. Even though the sky was dark grey and moody, there was something serene about it too.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Hatori replied. And knew he had waited too long.</p>
<p>“She doesn’t like me.”</p>
<p>“No.” Hatori stopped. He stopped and knelt down as best he could without getting his trousers damp as he took Momiji’s shoulders. Because this was important. Momiji needed to understand. “She doesn’t understand. She doesn't understand you and it breaks her heart that she can't hold you close to her."</p>
<p>Momiji tilted his head to one side. He smiled slightly and still looked years older. As though he had already figured out that grown ups lie. All the time.</p>
<p>"She does not try."</p>
<p>She doesn't try to understand, Hatori translated. And that was true. He'd been called to check on her health over the years, and she had never shown signs of improving. Was still stuck on that first, terrifying moment when Momiji transformed in her arms. It was devouring her.</p>
<p>He had recommended a psychiatrist - he wasn't qualified- but who could the possibly talk to about something like this.</p>
<p>Hatori's grip loosened on Momiji and he straightened, finding himself beaten by a four year old. He continued walking, in silence.</p>
<p>A tiny hand slipped into his. Small, cold fingers taking hold of his own. Too small to grasp all of his hand at once.</p>
<p>He looked down, but Momiji wasn't looking at him. His head was down - hair dripped rain down the back of his neck - and splashing in whatever puddles came close enough to him.</p>
<p>It splashed Hatori's trousers too. And the bottom of his blazer. But he supposed he wasn’t going anywhere today anyway – did it matter?</p>
<p>Momiji was splashed too. Dirty water splashing on leather shoes and white socks – soaking them through. Some got on his bare knees, leaving them streaked with dirt.</p>
<p>Hatori smiled, even though he knew he would be in trouble for ruining the boy’s perfect image. He wasn’t perfect. He turned into a rabbit and he liked jumping in puddles.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, after a quick tour around the Sohma estate, Hatori found himself wiping Momiji’s legs down, whilst he perched in Hatori’s spinning chair. He made it look huge – and it took more than a moment to get him to stop swinging his legs excitedly.</p>
<p>He had Momiji’s socks on the radiator, and his shoes underneath it, in an attempt to dry them off.</p>
<p>Momiji had a spare towel around his shoulders too. It was a threadbare old thing that Hatori kept around as a back up in the office. But he didn’t complain about how scratchy it must be, as he ruffled it around dripping blonde curls. It made them stick up all the more – made it frizz.</p>
<p>“I like you more than Papa,” Momiji said.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t tell him that.” Hatori hoped that it would spark hurt in the man. Or anger. But what scared him more was that he wasn’t sure it would. Or if it would simply be an inconvenience. Another thing Momiji didn’t live up to.</p>
<p>“I don’t tell much.” Momiji’s leg kicked out again. So that it nudged Hatori in the arm, but gently this time. On purpose. To get him to look up. His cheeks were still red from the slight chill outside. “You understand.”</p>
<p>Hatori wasn’t sure who told him, or who he knew – if he even understood the New Year’s banquet and what it meant. But whatever it was, Momiji knew that he was also a member of the zodiac, and only other zodiac members really <em>knew </em>what that meant.</p>
<p>“I do.” What else could Hatori say?</p>
<p>“Do you like me too?”</p>
<p>It was a question only a child could ask, and the bluntness was refreshing. He found himself smiling, even though he didn’t mean to.</p>
<p>“More than I like your Papa,” he said.</p>
<p>That made Momiji giggle, and something happened in Hatori’s chest at the sound. Something warm that he hadn’t felt in a long time.</p>
<p>He did like Momiji. He had gotten used to the boy’s company, and there was a part of him that revelled in the quiet rebellion of Momiji’s father. The German and the getting splashed in the rain. Little things that made the boy so happy.</p>
<p>Hatori wanted to make him happy. Keep him happy, for now. It was an incredibly selfish thing to think – that, for now, he wanted this little boy to like him.</p>
<p>Because he had a feeling that would change. As soon as his mother made <em>that </em>decision.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>(A/N): Ages and ages ago, I saw an ask on tumblr about why Momiji would be so close to Hatori after what he did, and the person theorized a concept similar to this. I started writing this all the way back then, and only just got to finish it recently. I did really like the concept though, and enjoyed putting these scenes together.<br/>There is a second part, and I'm hoping that by posting this I'll have the drive to finish it off and post it by next Thursday. Hopefully.<br/>Thank you in advance for any kudos/comments etc etc &lt;3 xx</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>